He is a spy with a tortured past (read: drunk dad), she is a bored socialite who decides to spy on him. They are both delightful and the book is incredibly fun, but nothing happens except "I hate you, no wait, maybe I love you instead!" flirting and then the last chapter throws in some "action" which makes very little sense.
If only I hadn't finished it so quickly. Like most romance novels I wish there was more to the story. I want to read about them doing things as/after they fall in love.
Grade: B
Originally posted 2010
Saturday, March 12, 2016
The Devil's Candy: The Anatomy of a Hollywood Fiasco, Julie Salamon
I really like books about how books and movies are created. I find it very comforting, somehow, reading about all the things that go wrong for other people, and how stressful the process can be. I like hearing that successful people are crazy or insecure.
Brian De Palma gave Julie Salamon unrestricted access to the set of Bonfire of the Vanities as he filmed. It's really interesting to see, day by day, how the filming happened and all the decisions that were made. Salamon doesn't speculate as to where it all went wrong, and she's pretty sympathetic toward nearly everyone involved -- except Bruce Willis, who comes off as a huge douche, and the studio executives, who come off as meddling know-nothings. Still, even as a teenager I knew it was a shitty movie. And this is a really interesting look at how it ended up that way.
(Don't ask why I watched it, I can't remember. I must have been 14 or 15 and I made a lot of strange movie-watching decisions. I also read the book. I don't think I understood it, but I was pretty impressed by the writing. (And disturbed. As a sheltered country-living teenager I had no context for Bonfire.))
Brian De Palma gave Julie Salamon unrestricted access to the set of Bonfire of the Vanities as he filmed. It's really interesting to see, day by day, how the filming happened and all the decisions that were made. Salamon doesn't speculate as to where it all went wrong, and she's pretty sympathetic toward nearly everyone involved -- except Bruce Willis, who comes off as a huge douche, and the studio executives, who come off as meddling know-nothings. Still, even as a teenager I knew it was a shitty movie. And this is a really interesting look at how it ended up that way.
(Don't ask why I watched it, I can't remember. I must have been 14 or 15 and I made a lot of strange movie-watching decisions. I also read the book. I don't think I understood it, but I was pretty impressed by the writing. (And disturbed. As a sheltered country-living teenager I had no context for Bonfire.))
Grade: A
Originally posted 2010
Midnight's Children, Salman Rushdie
I really, really, really liked this book. It was epic and awesome and full of history. Despite having read the introduction I didn't see the twist about The Widow coming at the end. The language is vivid and gorgeous and at times absolutely hypnotic. One of the best books I've read in ages.
I should add, though, that I liked the first 2/3 a lot better than the last 1/3 which felt like it was wandering into a different story. And I need someone a lot smarter than me to express my dissatisfaction with the way women in the book were catalysts and plot points, but not really characters. I can't quite articulate it, but the narrator says as much near the end, that all the events in his life were caused by women, or by loving a woman, or by hating a woman, or whatever. And I would like a story that includes women, instead of just being driven by them.
I should add, though, that I liked the first 2/3 a lot better than the last 1/3 which felt like it was wandering into a different story. And I need someone a lot smarter than me to express my dissatisfaction with the way women in the book were catalysts and plot points, but not really characters. I can't quite articulate it, but the narrator says as much near the end, that all the events in his life were caused by women, or by loving a woman, or by hating a woman, or whatever. And I would like a story that includes women, instead of just being driven by them.
Grade: A
Originally posted 2010
Jesus Wars: How Four Patriarchs, Three Queens, and Two Emperors Decided What Christians would Believe for the Next 1,500 Years, Philip Jenkins
I can't imagine anyone but me would be interested in this book, but I was very, very interested. It has always fascinated me that there were all kinds of wars and assassinations over the idea of monophytism, when it seems like such an obscure fiddly little detail of Christianity. (...says the atheist Jew.) The book has a really interesting thesis about the fractures in Eastern Christianity paving the way for the Muslim invasions of the 700s. And at one point the author compares all the extremely complicated religious arguments taking place to that scene in Monty Python and the Holy Grail where they read the directions for the Holy Hand Grenade.
Grade: B
Originally posted 2010
Grade: B
Originally posted 2010
Mary, Queen of Scots, and the Murder of Lord Darnley, Alison Weir
One of my coworkers picked this book up and went, "What is this, like, a Phillipa Gregory book?" I kind of rolled my eyes and said, "Actually it's a 600 page non-fiction book about the murder of the King of Scotland." She shrugged and said, "I didn't like 'The Other Boleyn Girl' that much," and walked away.
I am definitely the sort of person who enjoys a 600 page exploration of the evidence about who killed someone 400 years ago (even though most of that evidence has vanished or was a forgery to begin with). The process of trying to solve a mystery hundreds of years after the fact is so INTERESTING. I'm not particularly invested in who killed Lord Darnley, so I'm happy to go along with Weir's opinion on Mary's guilt. And it as a super interesting contrast to her book on Elizabeth, which wasn't sympathetic to Mary at all.
I am definitely the sort of person who enjoys a 600 page exploration of the evidence about who killed someone 400 years ago (even though most of that evidence has vanished or was a forgery to begin with). The process of trying to solve a mystery hundreds of years after the fact is so INTERESTING. I'm not particularly invested in who killed Lord Darnley, so I'm happy to go along with Weir's opinion on Mary's guilt. And it as a super interesting contrast to her book on Elizabeth, which wasn't sympathetic to Mary at all.
Grade: B
Originally posted 2010
On A Wild Night, Stephanie Laurens
There's a contingent of people who say, "Romance novels are just porn for girls," and normally you can argue that, but WOW there was a lot of sex in this book. Page after page after page of sneaking-around sex, sometimes just out of view of a ballroom behind a fern or something.
I really liked the way the book uses romance novel tropes; our heroine, Amanda, wants a big tough dark brooding alpha male type, so she goes and deliberately hangs out in places where she knows she'll get in trouble so her big tough dark brooding man will come save her. (He has a secret tortured past which precludes him from loving anyone as well-born as she is, obviously.) It was nice to have the heroine do stuff that should have been Too Stupid To Live, but on purpose. Then they have sex (SO MUCH SEX) and he's like, "Well, now we HAVE to get married," and she gets mad and refuses to marry him, so he tries to sex her into marrying him for like 300 pages. Oh, and at the end someone shoots someone and dark histories are revealed and they get married.
Seriously, though, where did he get these amazing lead-lined noise-blocking ferns?
Grade: C
Originally posted 2010
I really liked the way the book uses romance novel tropes; our heroine, Amanda, wants a big tough dark brooding alpha male type, so she goes and deliberately hangs out in places where she knows she'll get in trouble so her big tough dark brooding man will come save her. (He has a secret tortured past which precludes him from loving anyone as well-born as she is, obviously.) It was nice to have the heroine do stuff that should have been Too Stupid To Live, but on purpose. Then they have sex (SO MUCH SEX) and he's like, "Well, now we HAVE to get married," and she gets mad and refuses to marry him, so he tries to sex her into marrying him for like 300 pages. Oh, and at the end someone shoots someone and dark histories are revealed and they get married.
Seriously, though, where did he get these amazing lead-lined noise-blocking ferns?
Grade: C
Originally posted 2010
Beyond Heaving Bosoms: The Smart Bitches' Guide to Romance Novels, Sarah Wendell and Candy Tan
I wasn't sure what the book would have to offer that the website didn't already, but it was pretty fantastic. Some of it's silly (the coloring pages are hilarious but useless) while other parts are awesome (the choose-your-own-adventure which I won without cheating three times, tyvm). They do a lot of good critical analysis of the genre and the history of the genre (why IS there so much rape, honestly?) and how to respond to people who look down on you for reading the best-selling genre in fiction because it's just "porn for girls." I read whole sections of it out loud to my sister. I could do with more analysis and fewer footnotes about porny puns, but hey, I couldn't stop reading it, either.
Grade: B
Originally posted 2010
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